Tech Explained: Here’s a simplified explanation of the latest technology update around Tech Explained: Nvidia CEO Wants Tech Execs to Stop Laying Off Workers and Scaring People in Simple Termsand what it means for users..
AI is having a major PR crisis, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is really worried about it.
As AI technology improves and leverages the underregulated space it inhabits to creep further into modern society, the risks it brings have become a major topic of public discussion over the past year or so. Due to the increased visibility of the risks of AI, from addiction to the technology’s role in warfare, there’s been a growing resentment of the technology, even leading to calls for AI chatbot boycotts and data center moratoriums.
Speaking to the press at the company’s GPU Technology Conference in California this week, Huang’s goal seemed to be to do some damage control for AI, while cautioning against AI doomerism and increased regulatory action.
“We have to make sure that we continue to inform the policymakers and not allow doomerism and extremism to affect how policymakers think and understand about this technology,” Huang told the All In podcast.
While “the desire to warn people about the capability of the technology is also really terrific,” Huang said that he does not want people to be scared of the proliferation of AI.
“The risk that we run as a nation, our greatest source of national security concern with respect to AI, is other countries adopt this technology while we are so angry at it, or afraid of it, or somehow paranoid of it, that our industries, our society, don’t take advantage of AI,” Huang said. “So I’m mostly worried about the diffusion of AI in the United States.”
Technologists need to be “more moderate,” “balanced,” and “thoughtful” in their predictions about AI’s impact on society, Huang said.
One area where he seems to believe we surely need more moderate predictions is the impact AI is expected to have on the job market.
At the dawn of the technology, AI was promised to be a tool that could cut workload dramatically for the average worker, giving back precious time lost and perhaps facilitating a future where a 4-day workweek could be possible.
Now, a couple of years down the road, the actual returns on productivity or on the quality of life for the average worker are still heavily debated. Some companies are just not seeing as big a bump to productivity as expected, with the tools often hallucinating and requiring heavy vetting. In the companies that do see an increase in productivity thanks to AI agents, executives eager to maximize profit margins are using that as an excuse to reduce hiring or lay off workers.
Experts have long argued that widespread AI adoption in the business world could bring about a white-collar unemployment catastrophe. Some say the early signs of that impact are already visible in some parts of the labor market, with early-career workers in vulnerable sectors as clear victims.
But Huang is careful to weave a more optimistic view of AI’s impact on the labor market. In a conversation with CNBC’s Jim Cramer earlier this week, Huang said that the companies that are laying people off to automate their tasks with agents are “out of imagination.”
Companies should instead use AI to “do more with less,” he said. What that looks like, according to his comments on the All-In podcast, is AI agents automating mundane tasks and changing the nature of jobs rather than replacing them. In the end, he wants every worker to “be the expert of using AI.”
“Let’s say you have a software engineer or an AI researcher, and you pay them $500,000 a year,” Huang said. “If that $500,000 engineer did not consume at least $250,000 worth of tokens, I’m going to be deeply alarmed.”
This reliance on AI will go beyond the tech world in Huang’s vision, and workers across sectors will use AI to “elevate” the capabilities of their jobs.
“Every carpenter could now be an architect. Every plumber will become an architect,” Huang said. “I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if the chauffeurs of the future become your mobility assistant and help you do a whole bunch of stuff while the car is driving by itself.”
But one question that Huang is not addressing is whether every carpenter or plumber actually wants to be an architect. Is it really that outrageous for a driver to want to drive a car rather than become the personal assistant of their passengers?